Janet Evanovich - Takedown Twenty

“Would you like to come in?” I asked him.

“Is this invitation out of passion or pity?”

“Do you care?”

Ranger smiled. “No.”

The truth is, I felt inviting him in was the least I could do after declining Rita’s invitation on his behalf. I mean I’d be a really terrible person if I didn’t compensate him for that, right? At least give him a glass of wine. Tell him how appreciative I was for all he did for me.

I hung my bag on the hook in the foyer and went into the kitchen.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” I asked him.

“No.”

“Pretzels? I went food shopping. I have crackers and cheese.”

He shook his head, closed in on me, and I felt the first stab of panic.

“Um,” I said.

Ranger pulled back and looked at me. “Really?”

I sucked in some air. “I can’t do this. I’m almost engaged.”

And the hideous part was that I really wanted to do it. I wanted to do it bad .

He brushed a kiss across my lips. “You know where to find me. In the meantime you can drive my car.”

“The 911 Turbo?”

“My fleet car. I’ll have one dropped off.”

EIGHTEEN

I WENT TO nine o’clock mass. The last time I’d gone to mass was Easter, and my mother had made me go. I heard people gasp when I walked into the church. I’m sure they were wondering what horrible thing I’d done that had driven me to attend mass. Fortunately or un fortunately, however you were looking at it, the horrible thing was all in my mind. I’d thrashed around all night in a sweat over Ranger. On the one hand I felt good that I’d done right by Morelli and sent Ranger home. It was the other hand that was giving me problems. The other hand wanted to wrap itself around Ranger’s most perfect body part and not let go.

I stopped in at my parents’ house after mass. My grandmother was at the kitchen table doing a Jumble, and my mother was ironing.

“Now what?” I asked my mother. “Why are you ironing?”

“Since when can’t a person iron?” my mother said.

“You iron on Thursdays after you do the laundry. Ironing on Sunday is mental health ironing. You probably ironed this same shirt ten times.”

“It’s breast cancer, isn’t it? You found a lump. It’s from those sports bras you wear.”

“I don’t have breast cancer.”

“Then why did you go to church? Harriet Chumsky called and said she saw you at mass.”

“I just felt like going to mass.”

“Omigosh,” my mother said. “You’re pregnant.”

“I’m not pregnant.”

“There’s something,” my mother said. “You don’t just go to mass. Are you sure it’s not cancer?”

“It’s not cancer!” I helped myself to a cup of coffee and added cream. “How did the date go last night?” I asked Grandma.

“It was pretty good. We went to the diner for rice pudding, only thing is he had car troubles when we came out, and he had to call his nephew to come get the engine started. He said he’s thinking about buying a new car. I wouldn’t mind that on account of his car right now is gray. If I’m going out with a guy who’s shorter than me and has asthma, I think he should at least have a red car.”

“I don’t trust him,” my mother said. “He’s too happy. And he’s not from the Burg. What do we know about him? Where does he live?”

“He’s got an apartment in one of those buildings by the DMV,” Grandma said. “I haven’t been there yet. It turns out he isn’t as hot as people said.”

“Melvina Gillian was talking about a new boyfriend just before she was killed,” I said to Grandma. “Do you know if any of the other women had boyfriends?”

“Not that I heard.”

“How about your friends now? Is there anyone talking about having a new boyfriend?”

“You mean besides me?”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t heard anything,” Grandma said. “It’s hard to get a boyfriend when you’re a certain age. All the good ones are dead. Do you think there’s some Don Juan going around sweettalking the ladies and then throwing them into a Dumpster?”

I took a cookie out of the cookie jar and dunked it in my coffee. “It’s possible.”

And if you wanted to stretch your imagination the Don Juan could be Gordon, I thought. Or maybe Gordon and an accomplice.

“Wouldn’t that be something,” Grandma said. “Sometimes life is like a television show. I wouldn’t mind seeing this Don Juan. I bet he’s got a red car. Or maybe it’s not some Don Juan. Maybe it’s some mob guy. It came to me last night that these women could have owed the wrong people money. What if they were gambling, and they couldn’t pay up?”

“What kind of gambling?” I asked her. “Off-track betting? Late-night poker?”

“Online Bingo,” Grandma said.

“What makes you think they were gambling online?” I asked Grandma.

“I tried playing a couple times. It’s real cutthroat Bingo. You got to pay to play, and you could sink a lot of money into it if you keep playing and don’t win anything.”

“Did all the murdered women play?”

“I don’t know about all of them, but I know Bitsy Muddle was on all the time. And I was playing once when Lois was playing. I knew it was them because I knew their handles. Bitsy was ‘Little Bit,’ and Lois was ‘Hotsy Totsie.’ ”

“When did they play?”

“Just about every night, but usually not until after nine o’clock,” Grandma said. “There’s other things to do up to nine o’clock. Television shows and real-life Bingo.”

My mother had stopped ironing. “This is the first I heard about this.”

“That’s because you don’t play Bingo, and you sleep at night,” Grandma said. “When you get older you nod off all day long, and then you don’t need to go to bed so early.”

“I find it hard to believe those women were running up gambling debts,” my mother said.

“That’s just one of my theories,” Grandma said. “It could also have been aliens from some other galaxy that got them. And the aliens needed money but they didn’t need any old ladies.”

“If I wanted to drop in and watch the Bingo games, how would I do it?” I asked Grandma.

“I can give you the website. There’s lots of online gambling sites, but mostly I only hear talk about this one that comes off an island in the Caribbean.”

I got the information from Grandma, finished my coffee, and stood to leave.

“You can stop ironing,” I said to my mother. “I don’t have cancer. I’m not pregnant. And Grandma isn’t gambling her Social Security checks away playing online Bingo.”

“There’s always tomorrow,” my mother said.

I left my parents’ house and drove past Joe’s mother’s house. It was only a few blocks away so it wasn’t a huge effort. I idled for a moment and moved on. There was no indication that Sunny had returned, and I wasn’t about to knock on the door without good reason.

My real destination was Victory Hardware. I was going to buy a vacuum cleaner. I had no idea if Victor carried them, but it seemed like a good place to start.

Snoot ambled up to me when I walked in. Snoot wasn’t nearly as old as Victor, but he had the same deeply lined dead-skin look of a lifelong heavy smoker. If I had to guess I would say he was in his forties. He was about six feet tall, and lanky, walking slouched and loose-jointed. His thinning brown hair was pulled back into a low ponytail.

“Yuh?” he asked me.

“Is Victor here?”

“He stepped out to get us eats.”

“I’m looking for a vacuum cleaner.”

“We don’t have none of those. We had a couple of ’em years ago, but they took up too much space, so Victor never got any more in. If you want a vacuum cleaner you should go to the Hoover store two blocks down. You can’t go wrong with a Hoover.”